Karma

Schmidt Number: S-5620

On-line since: 31st January, 2019

IV

Dornach, February 24, 1924

T

ODAY I
wish, primarily, to bring before you some of the more
comprehensive aspects in the development of karma, in order to
be able gradually to go more and more into matters of detail.
If we wish to gain insight into the course of karma, we must be
able to imagine how the human being gathers his whole
organization together as he descends out of the spiritual world
into the physical. You will understand, my dear friends,
that in the language of today there are no suitable expressions
for certain processes which are practically unknown to modern
civilization, and that, therefore, the expressions employed
here for what takes place under certain conditions can only be
approximate.

When
we descend out of the spiritual into the physical world for an
earth life, we have, to begin with, prepared our physical body
by means of the stream of heredity. We shall see how this
physical body is, nevertheless, connected in a certain
sense with what the human being experiences between death
and a new birth. Today, however, it will suffice if we are
clear about the fact that the physical body is given to us from
the earth; on the other hand, those members which we may
describe as the higher members of the human being — the
ether body, astral body, and ego — come down from the
spiritual world.

The
human being attracts, so to speak, the ether body out of the
whole universal ether before he unites himself with the
physical body which is given to him by heredity. The union of
the soul-spirit man — i.e. ego, astral body, and ether
body — with the physical human embryo can ensue only
through the gradual withdrawal of the ether body of the
maternal organism from the physical human embryo.

The
human being, thus, unites himself with the physical germ after
having attracted his ether body out of the common universal
ether. The more precise descriptions of these events will
occupy us later. At present we are to interest ourselves mainly
in asking: Whence come the individual members of human nature
which the human being possesses during earth life between birth
and death?

The
physical organism comes, as we have seen, from the stream of
heredity, the etheric organism out of the universal ether from
which it is attracted. The astral organism — of which the
human being remains, we might say, in all respects unconscious
or only sub-consciously aware during his earth life
— this astral body contains all the results of the life
between death and a new birth. And it is a fact that
between death and a new birth, according to what the human
being has become through his preceding earth lives, he comes,
in the most manifold way, into relationship with other
human souls who are also in the life between death and a new
birth, or with other spiritual beings of a higher cosmic order
who do not descend to earth in a human body, but have their
existence in the spiritual world.

All
that a man brings over from his former lives on earth according
to what he was, according to what he has done, all this is met
by the sympathy or antipathy of the beings whom he learns to
know while he passes through the world between death and a new
birth. What sympathies and antipathies he meets among the
higher beings according to what he has done in his preceding
earth life is of great significance for karma during this
period; but, above all, it is of deep significance that he
comes into relationship with those human souls with whom he was
in relationship on earth, and that a peculiar reflection takes
place between his own nature and the nature of the souls with
whom he had this relationship. Let us assume that someone
has had a good relationship with a soul whom he now encounters
again between death and a new birth. All that the good
relationship implies had lived in him during former earth
lives. Then this good relationship is reflected in the soul,
when this soul is encountered between death and a new birth.
And it is really true that the human being during this passage
through the life between death and a new birth sees himself
reflected everywhere in the souls with whom he is now
associated because he was associated with them on earth. If he
did good to a human being, something is mirrored to him from
the other soul; if he did him an evil turn, something is
likewise mirrored to him from the other soul. And he has the
feeling — if I may use the word “feeling”
with the reservation made at the beginning of these
observations — he has the feeling: “You have
advanced this human soul. What you have experienced
through advancing him, what you then felt for this soul, that
impulse in your feelings which led to your attitude toward him,
your own inner experiences in performing the deed that advanced
this soul, come back to you from him. They are reflected to you
from this soul. In another case you have injured a soul; what
has lived in you during this injury is reflected to
you.”

And
the human being has actually spread out before him, as though
in a mighty and wide-extending reflector, his previous earth
lives, but chiefly the last one, mirrored from the souls with
whom he was associated. And we gain the impression, just in
regard to our life of action, that all that is departing from
us. We lose the ego-feeling which we had on earth in the body,
or we really lost it a long time ago between death and a new
birth. Now, however, the ego-feeling arises in us from this
whole reflection. With the mirroring of our deeds, we
come to life in all the souls with whom we were associated
during our earth life.

On
earth, our I, our ego, was like a point. Here between death and
a new birth, it is reflected to us everywhere from the
periphery. This is an intimate association with other souls,
but an association in accordance with the relations into which
we have entered with them.

And in
the spiritual world all this is a reality. If we go through a
room hung with many mirrors, we see ourselves reflected in each
one. But we also know that the reflections — according to
ordinary human parlance — are “not
there;” when we depart they do not remain; we are no
longer reflected. But that which is reflected there in human
souls remains as something present. And there comes a time in
the last third of the life between death and a new birth when
we form our astral body out of these mirrored images. We draw
all this together to form our astral body, so that, in truth,
when we descend from the spiritual world into the physical, we
carry in our astral body what we have taken up again into
ourselves, in accordance with the reflection to which our
actions of the former earth life have given rise in other souls
between death and a new birth. This gives us the impulses which
impel us toward or away from the human souls with whom we are
born again at the same time in the physical body.

In
this way, between death and a new birth, the impulse for the
karma of the new earth life is fashioned. I shall, very soon,
have to describe the process more in detail by taking the
ego into consideration also.

And
now we can trace how an impulse from one life works on into
other lives. Let us take, for example, the impulse of love. We
can perform our deeds in relation to other human beings out of
that impulse which we call love. There is a difference whether
we perform our acts out of a mere sense of duty, of convention,
of decency, or the like, or whether we perform them out of a
greater or lesser degree of love.

Let us
assume that during an earth life a human being is able to
perform actions warmed through and through by love. This,
indeed, remains as a real force in his soul. What he now
takes with him as result of his deeds, what is mirrored there
in the other souls, comes back to him as a reflection. And from
this he forms his astral body with which he descends to the
earth. There the love of the former earth life, the love which
has streamed out of him and which now returns to him from other
human beings, transforms itself into joy. So that, when the
human being does something for his fellow-men that is sustained
by love, something in connection with which love streams out of
him and accompanies the deeds which advance his fellow-men,
then the metamorphosis in the passage through life between
death and a new birth is of such a character that what is
outpouring love in one life on earth is, in the next earth
life, transmuted, metamorphosed, into joy streaming
toward him.

If you
experience joy, my dear friends, through a human being in one
earth life, you may be sure it is the outcome of the love which
you have shown for him in a former life. This joy now flows
back again into your soul during earth life. You know this
inwardly warming feeling of joy. You know what meaning joy has
in life, especially the joy which conies from human beings. It
warms life, it sustains life, we may say that it gives wings to
life. It is karmically the result of love bestowed.

In our
joy, however, we again experience a relation to the other human
being who gives us joy. So that in our former earth lives we
have had something within us that made the love flow out from
us; in our subsequent earth lives we already have, as a
result, the inward experience of the warmth of joy. And that is
again something that streams from us. A human being who is
allowed to experience joy in life, is of importance to his
fellow-men, has warming significance. A human being who has
cause for going joylessly through life behaves differently
toward his fellow-men from the one who is permitted to go
through life joyfully.

But
what is experienced in joy in the life between birth and death
is reflected again in the souls of the most various kinds with
whom we were associated on earth and who are now also in the
life between death and a new birth. And this reflection, which
in manifold ways then comes back to us from the souls of the
human beings known to us on earth, this reflection works
back in turn. We carry it again in our astral body when we
descend into the next earth life — we are now dealing
with the third earth life. Once more it is instilled,
imprinted, in our astral body. And it now becomes in its result
the underlying basis, the impulse for a quick and ready
understanding of human beings and the world. It becomes the
basis for that soul condition which sustains us by virtue of
our having the ability to understand the world. If we
find the conduct of human beings interesting and can take
joy in it, if we understand their conduct and take
interest in it in a given incarnation on earth, then that
directs us back to the joy of our previous incarnation, to the
love of our still earlier incarnation. Human beings who
are able to go through the world with a free and open mind, so
that the free and open mind permits the world to flow into
them, so that they have an understanding for the world, these
are human beings who have gained this attitude to the world
through love and joy.

What
we perform in our deeds out of love is altogether different
from what we do out of a rigid and dry sense of duty. You know,
indeed, that I have always emphasized in my books that the
deeds springing from love are to be understood as the truly
ethical, as the truly moral deeds. I have often been compelled
to indicate the great contrast, in this regard, between Kant
and Schiller. Kant, both in life and in knowledge,
“kantified”
[Kante in German means a hard
edge or angle. (Note by translator)]
everything. Through
Kant, everything in knowledge became sharp and angular;
and thus, also human conduct. “Duty, thou great and
exalted name, thou who containest nothing of pleasure, nothing
that curries favors ...” this passage I quoted in my
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity
to the pretended
vexation — not the sincere, but the pretended,
hypocritical vexation — of many opponents, and I
opposed to it what I must acknowledge to be my view:
“Love, thou impulse that speaketh warmly to the soul.
...”

Over
against the dry and rigid Kantian concept of duty, Schiller
coined the expression: “Gladly I serve my friends; yet
alas, I do it with pleasure, wherefore it oftentimes vexes me
that I am not virtuous,” For, according to the Kantian
ethics, that which we do out of inclination is not virtuous,
but only that which we do out of the rigid concept of duty.

Now,
there are human beings who, in the first place, do not attain
to love. But, because they cannot tell their fellow-man the
truth out of love (for if we love a human being we tell him the
truth, and not lies), because they are unable to love, they
tell the truth out of a sense of duty; since they cannot love,
they refrain, merely out of a sense of duty, from thrashing
their fellow-man, or boxing his ears, striking him, or doing
something similar, when he does anything they do not
like. There is, indeed, a difference between the deeds of love
and acting out of a rigid sense of duty — which, to be
sure, is absolutely necessary in social life, necessary for
many things.

Now,
the deeds that are done out of a rigid concept of duty, or out
of convention or propriety, because it is “the proper
thing to do,” will not call forth joy in the next earth
life, but in that they pass in the same way through the
reflection by the souls, as I have described it, they call
forth in the next earth life something which we might describe
as follows: We sense that we are an object of indifference to
other human beings. Many a person carries through life the
sense that he is an object of indifference to other human
beings and suffers from it. And rightly he suffers from it, if
he is of no concern to other human beings, for human beings are
there for one another, and the human being is dependent upon
not being a matter of indifference to his fellow-men. What the
human being thus suffers here is simply the result of the
lack of love in a former earth life where he behaved as a
decent human being because of the rigid duty which hung over
him like the sword of Damocles — I will not say, a sword
of steel, for that would be disquieting for most dutiful
people, but just like a wooden sword of Damocles.

We
have now reached the second earth life. That which comes as joy
from love becomes in the third life, as we have seen, a free
and open heart, bringing the world near to us, giving us
open-minded insight into all things beautiful and true and
good. That which streams to us as indifference from other human
beings, and what we experience thereby in one earth life,
fashions us for the third, that is to say for the next earth
life, into a human being who does not know what to do with
himself. When such a person enters school, he is at a loss what
to do with that which the teachers impart to him. When he
grows a little older, he does not know whether to become a
locksmith or Privy Councilor. He does not know what to do with
himself in life. He actually drifts aimlessly through life
without direction. In regard to his observation of the
outer world, he is not exactly dull. Music, for instance, he
understands well enough, but it gives him no pleasure. It is,
after all, a matter of indifference to him whether the music is
more or less good or more or less bad. To be sure, he feels the
beauty of a painting or other work of art, but there is always
something in his soul that irritates him: “What is the
good of it, anyhow? To what purpose is all this?” These,
in turn, are the things that make their appearance in karmic
connection in the third earth life.

Now
let us assume, however, that out of hate or an inclination to
antipathy a human being does certain injuries to his
fellow-men. Here we may imagine every conceivable degree. One
individual with criminal feelings of hatred may harm his
fellow-men. Or — I am omitting the intermediate
stages — he may be a critic. To be a critic, one must
always hate a little — unless one is a praising critic,
and such critics are few nowadays, for it is not interesting to
show recognition of other people's work; it becomes
interesting only when one can make fun of things. Now, there
are all manner of intermediate stages. But we have here to
think of human deeds which proceed from a cold antipathy
— antipathy about which we are often not at all clear
— or, at the other extreme, from hatred. All that is
brought about in this way by human beings against their
fellow-men or even against sub-human creatures, all this vents
itself in soul conditions which in turn also mirror themselves
in the life between death and a new birth. And then, in the
next earth life, out of the hatred is born that which streams
to us from the world as sorrow, as unhappiness caused from
without, as the opposite of joy.

You
will reply: “But really, we experience so much sorrow; is
that all due to hatred, greater or lesser hatred, in our
preceding life? I cannot possibly imagine” — a man
will be apt to say — “that I have been such a bad
lot, so that I must experience so much sorrow, because I have
hated so much.” Well, if we wish to think without
prejudice on these things, we must become aware of how great is
the illusion which gives us satisfaction and to which,
therefore, we easily surrender if it is a question of our
suggesting away from our conscious mind any feeling of
antipathy against other human beings. People really go through
the world with far more hatred than they think — at
least, with far more antipathy. And it is a matter of fact that
hatred, because it gives satisfaction to the soul, is not as a
rule consciously experienced. It is eclipsed by the
satisfaction it gives. But, when it returns as sorrow which
streams to us from without, then we notice it, as sorrow.

But
just consider for a moment, my dear friends — in order to
represent in a quite trivial fashion what is present
there as a possibility — think of an afternoon-tea
chatter, a real, a genuine gossiping tea party where half a
dozen (half a dozen is quite enough) “aunts” or
“uncles” — it can be uncles, too — or
“cousins,” if you will, are sitting together
discussing their fellows. Just think how many antipathies are
unloaded on human beings, say, in the course of an hour and a
half — often it is longer. While this antipathy pours
out, people do not notice it; but when it returns in the next
earth life, then it will, indeed, be noticed. And it returns,
inexorably.

Thus,
in actual fact, a portion — not all; we shall still
become acquainted with other karmic connections — a
portion of what we experience in one earth life as sorrow
caused from outside may very well be due to our feelings of
antipathy in a former earth life.

In
connection with all this we must, naturally, always realize
that karma, that some sort of karmic stream, must begin at some
time, somewhere. So that, if you have here, for example,
a succession of earth lives:

a
b c(d)

and
this (d) is the present life; not all pain, naturally, that
falls to our lot from without need be due to our former earth
lives. It may also be an original sorrow, which will work
itself out karmically only in the next earth life. I say,
therefore, that a large part of that sorrow which
streams to us from outside is a result of hate which was
brought into being in former earth lives.

If we
now proceed again to the third earth life, the result of what
streams to us there as sorrow — but only the result of
that sorrow which comes to us, so to speak, out of stored-up
hate — the result of this sorrow which then unloads in
our soul is, in the first place, a kind of mental
dullness, a sort of dullness in the capacity of insight
into the world. If you have a human being who confronts the
world phlegmatically and with indifference, who does not
confront the things of the world, or other human beings, with
an open heart, the fact is, very often, that he has acquired
this obtuseness of mind through the sorrow of a previous earth
life, caused in his own karma. This sorrow, however, when it
expresses itself in this way in obtuseness of soul must be
retraced to the feelings of hatred which occurred at least in
the second earth life prior to this one. We can be
absolutely sure that stupidity in any one earth life is
always the consequence of hatred in a certain former earth
life.

Yet,
my dear friends, the understanding of karma shall not rest only
on the fact that we comprehend karma for the purpose of
understanding life, but that we are also able to comprehend it
as an impulse of life, that we are conscious that with life
there is not merely an “a, b, c, d,” but also an
“e, f, g, h,”

a, b, c, (d), e, f, g, h

that
there are also earth lives still to come, and that what we
develop as the content of our soul in a present earth life will
have its effects, its results, in the next earth life. If any
one wishes to be especially stupid in his second earth life
after this one, he need, really, only hate a great deal in this
present earth life. But, if someone wishes to have a free and
open insight in the second earth life after this one, he need
only love with special intensity in this earth life. And
insight into karma, knowledge of karma, gains real value only
through the fact that it flows into our will for the future,
that it plays a role in this will for the future. And it is
true in every respect that the moment is now at hand in the
evolution of mankind when the unconscious can no longer
continue to be effective in the same way it was effective
previously, while our souls were passing through previous earth
lives, for human beings are becoming constantly freer and more
conscious.

Since
the first third of the fifteenth century we have been in the
age in which human beings are continually becoming freer and
more conscious. Hence, those individuals who are human beings
of the present time will have in a subsequent earth life a dim
feeling of previous earth lives. And just as the modern man, if
he notices that he is not very bright, does not ascribe this to
himself, but to his natural lack of ability — the cause
of which he usually seeks in his physical nature in accordance
with the theories of modern materialism — so will
the human beings who will be the re-incarnated human beings of
the present time, have at least an obscure feeling which will
worry them. If they are not very bright, they will feel that
something must have taken place which was connected with
feelings of hate and antipathy.

And,
if we speak today of a Waldorf School pedagogy, we must
naturally take into account the present earth
civilization. We cannot yet educate in complete frankness
in such a way that we consciously employ repeated earth lives
in education, for modern human beings have not yet even a dim
feeling for repeated earth lives. The beginnings, however, that
have been made just in the Waldorf School pedagogy, if they are
taken up, will continue to develop in the coming centuries with
the result that the following will be included in ethical,
moral education: If a child has little talent, it is due to
former earth lives in which it has hated intensely, and we
shall then, with the help of spiritual science, seek out whom
it might have hated. For the human beings who were hated, and
against whom deeds were committed out of hate, must be
rediscovered somewhere in the child's environment. Gradually,
in coming centuries, the education of a child will have to be
related far more definitely to human life. We shall have to
see, in regard to this dull child, whence that is reflected or
has been reflected in the life between death and a new birth,
which goes through a metamorphosis resulting in unintelligence
in this earth life. We shall then be able to do something to
the end that in childhood a special love is developed for those
human beings for whom the child felt specific hatred in former
earth lives. And we shall see that through such a
specifically aroused and directed love, the child's
intellect, nay, the child's whole soul state, will
brighten.

It is
not in general theories about karma that we shall find what can
aid education, but in looking concretely into life in order to
see what the karmic connections are. We shall soon notice that
the fact that children are brought together in a school class
by fate is, indeed, not something to be regarded with complete
indifference. And when we shall have risen beyond the hideous
carelessness that prevails in these things nowadays, when the
“human material” — for so it is often called
— which is thrown together in a school class is actually
conceived as though it were thrown together by mere chance, not
as though destiny had brought these human beings together,
— if we shall have risen beyond this appalling
indifference, we shall then gain a new outlook as educators, we
shall then be able to perceive what strange karmic threads are
spun from one child to the other as a result of former lives.
And we shall then bring into the children's development that
which can effect equalization.

In a
certain respect, karma is under the domination of an inexorable
necessity. Out of an inexorable necessity we are able
definitely to establish the sequence:

Love

— Joy

— Open Heart

Antipathy or Hatred

— Sorrow

— Stupidity

These
are unconditional connections. Although it is true that we are
confronted by an absolute necessity when a river follows its
course, yet we have frequently regulated rivers, have given
them a different course. So in like manner is it also possible
to regulate, if I may say so, the karmic stream, to affect its
course. Indeed, this is possible.

Thus,
if you notice that in childhood there is a tendency to idiocy,
and if you then realize the necessity of guiding the child,
especially of developing love in his heart, if you
discover — and this should be possible even today for
people with a fine observation of life, — if you discover
to which other children the child is karmically related, and if
you are able

Figure IV

to
bring the child to the point of loving just these children, to
perforin deeds of love for them, you will then see that you are
able with love to give a counterweight to antipathy, and that
you are able by means of it to correct this idiocy in the next
incarnation, in the next earth life.

There
are educators, trained, as it were, by their own instinct, who
often do some such thing out of their instinct, who bring
dull-witted children to the point where they are able to
love, and thus educate them by degrees to become more
intelligent human beings.

It is
such things that make our insight into karmic connections of
service to life.

Love

— Joy

— Open Heart

Antipathy

— Sorrow

— Stupidity
Love

Before
we go further in considering the details of karma, yet another
question will have to confront our souls. Just ask yourself:
What is a human being really with whom — in general, at
least — we may know ourselves to be karmically
related? I must use an expression which is often used today
rather ironically: such a man is a “contemporary”;
he is on the earth at the same time that we are.

If you
bear this in mind, you will say to yourself that, if you are
associated with certain human beings in one earth life, you
were associated with them in a previous earth life also
(generally speaking, at least; matters may, of course, be
somewhat shifted). And you were, likewise, associated
with them in a still earlier life. (See
Figure V)

Now,
those individuals, who live fifty years later than you, were
associated in turn with human beings in former earth
lives. Generally speaking, the human beings of, let us say, the
B series do not, in accordance with the thought we have
developed here, come in contact with the human beings of the A
series. This is an oppressive thought, but a true one.

Figure V

I
shall later speak about other debatable questions, such as
arise, for instance, through the fact that people often say
that humanity multiplies on the earth. Today, however, I should
like to place the following thought before you; it is, perhaps,
an oppressive thought, but it is none the less a true one. It
is an actual fact that the continued life of men on earth takes
place in rhythms. One shift of human beings — if I may
put it so — proceeds, as a general rule, from one earth
life to another; another shift of human beings does the same,
and they are in a certain sense separated from one another;
they do not come together during earth life. To be sure, in the
long intervening life between death and a new birth they do
come together; but for earth life it is, indeed, a fact that we
descend to the earth with a limited circle of people. To be
“contemporaries” has an inner meaning, an inner
importance just for repeated earth lives.

Why is
it so? I can assure you, this question which, in the first
place, may occupy us intellectually, has caused me the greatest
imaginable pain in the field of spiritual science, because it
is necessary to discover the truth regarding this question, the
inner nature of the facts. And thus, we may ask ourself —
forgive my using an example which really concerns me only as a
matter of research — we may ask ourself the question:
“Why were you not a contemporary of Goethe's? By your not
a contemporary of Goethe's you can, according to this truth,
conclude on general principles that you have never lived with
Goethe
on the earth. Goethe belongs to another shift of
human beings.”

What
really lies behind this? Here we must reverse the question. But
to do so we must have an open, liberal mind for human social
relationships. We must be able to ask ourself a question
— and I shall have very much to say in the near future
about this question — we must be able to ask ourself the
question: What is it really to be another man's contemporary?
What is it, on the other hand, to be able to know of him only
from history, so far as the earth life is concerned? What does
this mean?

Well,
my dear friends, we must have an open, liberal mind in order to
answer the intimate question: “How do matters stand with
regard to all the inner accompanying phenomena of the soul when
a contemporary of yours speaks to you, performs actions which
come near you? How do matters stand?” And, after having
acquired the necessary knowledge, you must then be able to
compare this with what the situation would be were you to come
into contact with a personality who is not your contemporary,
perhaps has never been such in any life on earth, and whom you
may, nevertheless, revere to the highest degree, much more,
perhaps, than any of your contemporaries — what would be
the situation were you to encounter this personality as a
contemporary? In a word — pardon the personal note
— what would the situation be, had I been a contemporary
of Goethe? If you are not an indifferent kind of person —
naturally, if you are an indifferent person and have no
comprehension of what a contemporary can be, you cannot very
well answer such a question — then you can ask the
question: “How would it be if I, walking down the
Schillergasse in Weimar toward the Frauenplan, had seen the fat
Privy Councilor approaching me, say in the year 1826,
1827?” Now, we know quite well, we could not have stood
it. Our contemporary we can stand. If the one with whom we
cannot be contemporary were, nevertheless, our contemporary, we
should not be able to endure him; he would, in a certain sense,
act like a poison on our soul life. We endure him as a
historical character, because he is not our contemporary, but
our successor or predecessor.

Of
course, if we have no feeling for such things, they remain in
the unconscious. We can well imagine that a certain man has a
fine feeling for the spiritual and knows that, had he walked
down the Schillergasse in Weimar toward the Frauenplan, and had
he, as a contemporary, encountered the fat Privy
Councilor Goethe with the double chin, he would then have felt
himself in an inwardly impossible state. The one, however, who
has no feeling for such things — well, he would, perhaps,
have taken off his hat!

These
things, my dear friends, do not derive from the earth life, be-
cause the reasons why we cannot be the contemporary of some
particular man are not to be found within earth life, because
here we must penetrate with our preception into the spiritual
relationships. This is why, for earth life, such things appear
at times paradoxical. Nevertheless, they are facts, most
certainly facts.

I can
assure you that I wrote with genuine love an Introduction to
Jean Paul's works, published in the
Cotta'sche Bibliothek der Weltliteratur.
Yet, if I had ever had to sit side by side with Jean Paul at
Bayreuth — without doubt, I should have had a stomach
ache. That does not hinder us from having the highest
reverence. But such an experience comes to every human being,
only, with most people it remains in the subconscious, in the
astral or in the ether body; it does not take hold of the
physical body. For the soul experience which must seize upon
the physical body must, indeed, become conscious. But the
following must also be clear to you, my dear friends: If you
wish to gain knowledge of the spiritual world, you cannot
escape hearing things which seem grotesque and paradoxical,
because the spiritual world is different from the physical.

It is,
of course, easy enough for anyone to ridicule the statement
that if I had been a contemporary of Jean Paul's, it would have
given me a stomach ache to sit in his company. It goes without
saying that for the everyday, banal, philistine world of
earthly life ridicule is to be expected. But the laws of
the banal, philistine world do not hold good for spiritual
relationships. If we wish to understand the spiritual world we
must accustom ourselves to think with other thought forms; we
must be prepared to experience many quite surprising things.
When, in our everyday consciousness, we read about
Goethe, we may naturally feel impelled to say: “How I
should like to have known him personally, to have shaken hands
with him!” and so on. That is thoughtlessness, for there
are laws according to which we are predestined for a certain
epoch of the earth in which we can live. Just as we are
preconditioned to stand a certain pressure of the air in our
physical body, and therefore cannot rise above the earth beyond
a certain height where the pressure is not agreeable, so is a
man who is predestined for the twentieth century unable to live
at the time of Goethe.

These
were the things which, at the outset, I wished to bring forward
about karma.